James T. Cleland - "The Way at the River Kwai" (June 24, 1962)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | Let us pray. | 0:30 |
Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts | 0:34 | |
be acceptable in thy sight. | 0:39 | |
Oh, Lord our strength and our redeemer. | 0:43 | |
Amen. | 0:48 | |
Do you recall back in 1954, the publication of a novel, | 0:56 | |
"The Bridge Over the River Kwai" by a French author. | 1:04 | |
It's the story of the building of a wooden bridge | 1:12 | |
by British prisoners of war on the Siam Myanmar border | 1:16 | |
to carry the railroad that would enable the Japanese | 1:24 | |
to invade India. | 1:29 | |
Do you remember the triangular contest | 1:33 | |
between the sadistic Japanese colonel, | 1:36 | |
who must have the bridge, | 1:42 | |
the militarily ritualistic British colonel | 1:46 | |
who supervises its building | 1:51 | |
and the cloak and dagger boys from Calcutta | 1:56 | |
who want to blow it up. | 2:00 | |
If you did not read the book, perhaps you saw the movie | 2:04 | |
with ceramic goodness as Colonel Nicholson. | 2:08 | |
Your feet are right now probably tapping out the theme song. | 2:14 | |
Colonel Bogey. | 2:21 | |
I nearly asked the organist to use Colonel Bogey | 2:23 | |
as the offertory voluntary, | 2:27 | |
which would be almost as imperious a request | 2:31 | |
as the student who asked for the sweetheart of Sigma Chi | 2:35 | |
at his wedding, I just re-read the book. | 2:38 | |
And I would like to receive the movie, | 2:44 | |
now the river kwai flowed into the chapel | 2:49 | |
this past spring through the channel of a preacher's sermon. | 2:54 | |
He illustrated his theme with two or three stories | 3:03 | |
from a volume published this year | 3:07 | |
by Ernest Gordon entitled through the valley of the kwai. | 3:10 | |
Now I read that book recently | 3:18 | |
and it is the text of this sermon | 3:21 | |
through the valley of the kwai to be a best seller. | 3:26 | |
It is a Spellbinder. | 3:33 | |
Whereas the bridge over the river Kwai | 3:36 | |
is fiction though, based on personal experiences | 3:39 | |
in Japanese prison camps and into China and Malaya, | 3:44 | |
this unloader volume is the biographical narrative of three | 3:49 | |
and a half years in the camps | 3:57 | |
whose inhabitants actually built the bridge. | 3:59 | |
It is written by one who was a professional soldier, | 4:05 | |
an officer in the other guy, islands Sutherland Highlanders. | 4:10 | |
Let me give you a resume of what happened | 4:15 | |
at the river kwai. | 4:18 | |
The background can be synced in two | 4:21 | |
or three paragraphs of Gordon's. | 4:23 | |
During the four years, they were in control. | 4:27 | |
The Japanese military violated every civilized code. | 4:31 | |
They murdered prisoners overtly by banner thing, | 4:37 | |
shooting drowning or decapitation. | 4:42 | |
They murdered them covertly by working | 4:47 | |
them beyond human endurance starving them, torturing them | 4:50 | |
and denying them medical care. | 4:57 | |
The survivors built the bridge. | 5:02 | |
Unwillingly says the author at Vienna point | 5:05 | |
and under the bamboo lash taking any risks to sabotage | 5:12 | |
the operation. Whenever the opportunity arose lying | 5:18 | |
in the death house, | 5:26 | |
which was the prisoner's name for the camp hospital, | 5:29 | |
Gordon overheard two medical offices discussing his case. | 5:33 | |
He's had the works malaria dysentery, | 5:39 | |
beriberi plus some kind of blood infection | 5:45 | |
we cant identify. | 5:50 | |
Oh yes. | 5:52 | |
He's also had an appendectomy and on top that a bad case | 5:53 | |
of diptheria, which left him without the use of his legs. | 5:58 | |
Now that's the background. | 6:04 | |
Now the first reaction to this kind of existence on the part | 6:07 | |
of the prisoners was an upsurge of religion. | 6:11 | |
Church services, Bible readings, private prayer. | 6:16 | |
It didn't last fought. It didn't work. | 6:23 | |
God declined to be put to use as a personal expedient. | 6:29 | |
The counter reaction was our widespread self-centeredness, | 6:39 | |
which revealed itself in selfishness, | 6:44 | |
hatred and fear Gordon calls it. | 6:47 | |
The law of the jungle men stole from one another. | 6:50 | |
They curse so creatively that they constructed | 6:57 | |
whole sentences in which every word was a curse. | 7:02 | |
Yet the strongest still died. | 7:07 | |
The Wiliest and the cleverest perish with the wheat | 7:12 | |
Gordon wrote her letter to his parents saying goodbye. | 7:19 | |
And then things began to happen, | 7:27 | |
which are told us in a chapter entitled miracles | 7:29 | |
by the river kwai. | 7:35 | |
Some of Gordon's friends built him a hut | 7:38 | |
where he could sweat out his illness in quiet | 7:44 | |
and if necessary, die in peace, an Englishman | 7:47 | |
by the name of dusty Miller. | 7:54 | |
Remember his name dusty Miller came voluntarily | 7:57 | |
and daily to be the gardens putrid ulcers. | 8:03 | |
With the help of another soldier, | 8:09 | |
the officer was nursed back to life. | 8:12 | |
Then stories of voluntary martyrdom began to be whispered. | 8:16 | |
There was the soldier who died of starvation | 8:23 | |
because he gave his rations to her sick friend. | 8:28 | |
There was the soldier who confessed | 8:35 | |
and confessed must be put in, in inverted commas, | 8:37 | |
the soldier who confessed that he had stolen. | 8:44 | |
And that's in quotes too | 8:48 | |
that he had stolen a missing shovel because he saw | 8:50 | |
that the guard was angry enough to shoot every man | 8:54 | |
in the squad. | 8:58 | |
And that soldier was beaten to death where he stood. | 9:00 | |
And when the tools were counted again | 9:06 | |
at the guard house, no shovel was missing. | 9:08 | |
listened to the ending of that story. | 9:14 | |
Admiration for the soldier, transcended hatred | 9:17 | |
for the Japanese | 9:24 | |
and Australian was decapitated because he was caught outside | 9:27 | |
the prison fence, trying to obtain medicine | 9:32 | |
from the natives for his sick friends. | 9:35 | |
His last words to the agitated chaplain were cheer up Padre. | 9:41 | |
It isn't as bad as all that I'll be. All right. | 9:47 | |
Thus was the law of the jungle. Denied | 9:54 | |
the law of the jungle is not the law for men | 10:00 | |
because man can become a beast. | 10:04 | |
He may become less than a beast. | 10:09 | |
Now Gordon thought about this. | 10:14 | |
He puzzled to find a common denominator. | 10:16 | |
The two soldiers who cared for him, | 10:21 | |
dusty Miller and did Miller were Christian, | 10:23 | |
but one was Methodist and the other was Roman Catholic. | 10:27 | |
Was there any word which linked to them and the others | 10:32 | |
who had given up the law of the jungle? | 10:35 | |
Could it be love? | 10:39 | |
Does love of neighbor have any relation to a love of God | 10:43 | |
to love from God? | 10:48 | |
And so a new kind of life began in the camp. | 10:52 | |
I discussion group was started by the Australians | 10:57 | |
to find out what Christianity was about. | 11:01 | |
Gordon was asked to lead it since he was a university man, | 11:04 | |
but he was told that he had to lead it on one understanding | 11:09 | |
the lads won't stand for any Sunday school stuff. | 11:13 | |
What they want is the real Dingo. | 11:19 | |
Well, they got it. | 11:23 | |
And that class grew into the jungle university | 11:25 | |
with a curriculum, which offered courses | 11:30 | |
in history, economics, philosophy, mathematics, several | 11:33 | |
of the sciences and at least nine languages, | 11:38 | |
including Latin, Greek, Russian, and Sanskrit, | 11:42 | |
an orchestra was formed. | 11:48 | |
And the theater artificial legs were made for the legless | 11:50 | |
who in turn made legs for the other legless | 11:57 | |
men painted cars, pins Finch, and gave exhibitions. | 12:01 | |
They invented drugs and anesthetic. | 12:08 | |
They manufactured surgical instruments. | 12:13 | |
They recovered respect even for the dead. | 12:18 | |
Instead of being chucked into a common pit, | 12:24 | |
each court received a personal barrier with a lectern cross | 12:28 | |
to mark the grave casually quietly. | 12:35 | |
A church was built. | 12:42 | |
Gordon said he doesn't know who built it an open air church, | 12:44 | |
a church, which was all doors. | 12:50 | |
It was named the church of the captivity. | 12:54 | |
Here are Gordon's words about it. | 13:00 | |
The church was a fellowship of those who came in freedom | 13:04 | |
and love to acknowledge their weakness, | 13:12 | |
to seek a presence and to pray for their fellows. | 13:18 | |
You notice that to acknowledge their weakness, | 13:25 | |
to seek a presence and to pray for themselves, no, | 13:30 | |
to pray for their fellows. | 13:35 | |
The confession of Jesus Christ as Lord. | 13:39 | |
Was the one requirement for membership. | 13:43 | |
The church was made up of Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalians, | 13:47 | |
Presbyterians, congregation, nation members, | 13:50 | |
and former agnostics. | 13:52 | |
sounds like the duke chapel. | 13:54 | |
When the end of the war came well let me quote Gordon again. | 13:59 | |
The incoming liberator's were so infuriated | 14:05 | |
by what they saw. | 14:09 | |
They wanted to shoot the Japanese guards on the spot. | 14:11 | |
Only the intervention of the victims prevented them. | 14:17 | |
Hatters were spared by that captive, | 14:23 | |
not an eye for an eye. | 14:29 | |
A limb for a limb this time. | 14:32 | |
said these exhausted but forgiving man, | 14:36 | |
and all this happened at a prisoner of war camp near | 14:42 | |
the bridge over the river kwai. | 14:48 | |
Now as I read this book, | 14:55 | |
two passages from the new Testament surface | 14:59 | |
from my subconscious memory, the two, | 15:03 | |
which formed dollar morning lesson, | 15:07 | |
let me quote a verse from each passage, | 15:11 | |
hoping you will spot the known, | 15:14 | |
which is common to both verse teacher. | 15:18 | |
We know that you are true and teach | 15:25 | |
the way of God Truthfully, that was said to Jesus, probably | 15:29 | |
in sarcasm. | 15:36 | |
The other verse, and Paul asked the high priest | 15:38 | |
for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, | 15:42 | |
so that if he found any belonging to the way men or women, | 15:46 | |
he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. | 15:53 | |
The noun common to both passages is way | 15:58 | |
W A Y | 16:02 | |
one of the many new Testament names for | 16:05 | |
the Christian manner of life, | 16:08 | |
for the walk and conversation of those who seek to implement | 16:11 | |
the will of God through the teaching of Jesus, | 16:17 | |
the way with a capital w becomes a designation | 16:21 | |
for the church. | 16:26 | |
but why not? | 16:28 | |
Jesus said, I am the way. | 16:31 | |
And the church is the body of Christ. | 16:36 | |
Now such a way has always two complimentary | 16:42 | |
and interacting aspects. | 16:46 | |
One is theological it's view of God | 16:49 | |
who is conceived and analogically | 16:56 | |
as a father, rather than as a king or a judge. | 16:58 | |
The other is ethical the day by day, living here on earth, | 17:05 | |
which is worthy up and satisfactory to such a father, God, | 17:13 | |
which comes first for some people, | 17:20 | |
the theological for others, the ethical, | 17:24 | |
but both groups would agree that the two aspects are needed | 17:29 | |
for proper explication and application of the way | 17:34 | |
some belief first and that second | 17:41 | |
for others action leads to belief, faith and works | 17:45 | |
works, and faith never independent, always inter dependent. | 17:52 | |
Have you ever thought of John Wesley's followers | 18:00 | |
as the people of the way? | 18:03 | |
Isn't that? What Methodist means? | 18:08 | |
The Greek word for the way is hodos | 18:11 | |
h o d o s | 18:15 | |
Methodist is properly Metta hodos that is after the way. | 18:18 | |
According to the way the name you should know | 18:26 | |
was originally one of several applied derisively | 18:30 | |
by fellow students, | 18:34 | |
to the members of the religious association formed | 18:35 | |
at Oxford university, by John and Charles Wesley and others, | 18:38 | |
no longer the term of duration. | 18:44 | |
Christians are people of the way in Jerusalem, in Damascus, | 18:47 | |
at Oxford on the bank of the river kwai. | 18:56 | |
No, I can almost hear your reaction to all this | 19:04 | |
such a way of life may be possible. | 19:10 | |
In fact, it is possible in a closed society, | 19:14 | |
especially one which is small in the early trip | 19:20 | |
in Wesley's holy club in a prison camp from which death | 19:28 | |
is the only escape it's possible in the orders | 19:34 | |
of the Roman Catholic church in the sale groups | 19:39 | |
within Protestantism. | 19:44 | |
But it is impossible unfeasible for the Christian | 19:46 | |
who has to live in daily contact with the wattle. | 19:52 | |
As most of us have to exist. | 19:57 | |
Now, this critic has a case. | 20:02 | |
We could document it from the last chapter of Gordon's book. | 20:06 | |
He retired to a world in which he was a stranger. | 20:13 | |
The whole Porter in a Glasgow hotel told them that | 20:23 | |
his war stained luggage could not be left in the hole. | 20:28 | |
The blood and mud would upset the sensitivities of civilian. | 20:34 | |
His first impressions of civilian, | 20:45 | |
were the realization of hatred fears and model cynicism. | 20:47 | |
Here is his description of the church in Scotland. | 20:56 | |
After my retirement, I had gone to church every Sunday, | 21:01 | |
but what I saw and heard depressed me, | 21:06 | |
the sermon has belonged to a different age. | 21:11 | |
They suggested Victorian powers, | 21:15 | |
elderly people dressed in black horsehair chairs | 21:19 | |
and antimacassar. | 21:24 | |
We had seen a vision of FOD horizons conduct glimpse | 21:28 | |
of the city of God in all its beauty. | 21:34 | |
The critic has an argument, but that's another argument. | 21:42 | |
The way was adopted in the first century | 21:50 | |
and by Wesley and the river Kwai | 21:56 | |
as the only method of transforming existence | 22:02 | |
into life of metamorphosing, | 22:07 | |
ugliness into beauty of creating harmony | 22:12 | |
out of discord. | 22:19 | |
Are we really living in a much healthier situation today? | 22:22 | |
What can we do? there's little, | 22:32 | |
any of us can do about waddled problems? | 22:35 | |
What about impersonal social conflict? | 22:40 | |
But there is much that we can do within them the alumnae of | 22:44 | |
the kwai and other health camps knew that | 22:50 | |
some and took the ministry to share with the church, | 22:56 | |
the vision they had seen in Thailand. | 23:01 | |
Others became lay members of their local churches | 23:06 | |
for the same reason. | 23:10 | |
Others are by intention, teachers, welfare officers, | 23:13 | |
research technicians, doctors in worship, | 23:19 | |
and that work, they wanted to be in contact with people | 23:25 | |
to share the good life which they had discovered in prison. | 23:32 | |
It takes only a cup of cold water, a sick visit, | 23:40 | |
a piece of clothing to get run into the kingdom | 23:49 | |
if they are given in love. | 23:56 | |
That is the way and yet. | 24:00 | |
Lest we leave this house of God with either our rosy glow | 24:11 | |
or a cynical smile. | 24:19 | |
There's one other thing to be said. | 24:21 | |
You recall dusty Miller | 24:25 | |
who voluntarily bathed Gordon woulds. | 24:29 | |
what happened to him. | 24:34 | |
Gordon asked that question too | 24:37 | |
when he was finally released, but what about Miller? | 24:40 | |
He got the Japanese warrat officer in charge | 24:45 | |
of his party down on him. | 24:48 | |
What did he done wrong? | 24:52 | |
That was it. | 24:54 | |
He hadn't done anything wrong. | 24:56 | |
The hated him because he couldn't break him. | 25:01 | |
You know how he was a good man, if ever there was one, | 25:07 | |
that's why he hated him. | 25:13 | |
What did the nip do to him? | 25:17 | |
He's strung them up to a tree. | 25:20 | |
You mean? | 25:23 | |
Yes, he crucified him | 25:24 | |
the way is not walked in a rosy glow. | 25:32 | |
That's little about it for the Senate to smile at | 25:39 | |
it is a way which leads to the new Jerusalem, | 25:45 | |
but across maybe a waste station on it, | 25:50 | |
it is not a way for the idealist. | 25:58 | |
It is a way for a realist. | 26:04 | |
There's a footnote to be added to this sermon. | 26:12 | |
Do you know what Gordon, | 26:17 | |
the author of the book is now doing? | 26:19 | |
He was a professional soldier. | 26:23 | |
He is now the Dean of the chapel | 26:29 | |
at Princeton university. | 26:33 | |
Amen. | 26:39 | |
Let us pray. | 26:41 |